Well, since I last blogged, there have been some changes. Well, one in particular. I took the step in Easter of this year of leaving teaching. So I am now (and have been for the past one and a half months) a full-time creative freelancer.

So what is it like? Well, I’ve been fortunate. Since I walked out of the school where I’d taught for the past 12 years, I’ve been busy. I was commissioned to paint a large canvas of the Golf Links at Pebble Beach in California, and was also sent the first cut of my next TV series to score – all in the space of a couple of days – both arriving out of the blue in the same week I left teaching. It’s as if the man upstairs knows that I’d need a bit of reassurance that I’ve down the right thing.

So that’s what I’ve been busy doing these last 6 weeks or so – these and writing some four songs for the school – my last gift to them – to use in a production about the Coventry Blitz in 1940. So now, I’ve completed the songs, completed and sent the large canvas, and have almost completed the TV score. I have another TV score in the pipeline, and I’m also extremely busy creating some new artwork for the Warwickshire Open Studios, starting (if all goes to plan and the pandemic doesn’t throw us another curve-ball) on the 19th June.

So I wouldn’t really have time now to be a teacher.

Having said that, what I am discovering is how much harder it is to maintain momentum and motivation when there is only me pushing. I think that’s why I love doing commissions – both art and music – they are difficult to get right, because the customer is always right and they always have a fairly fixed view in their imagination of what they want, but it’s not always easy for the artist or composer to find that. But there are time limits placed on such ventures, and so they have their own momentum.

But I’ve only been doing this for a month and a half, so I ought not to be too hard on myself. I will develop a routine. It will come. In the meantime, I leave you with some of the artwork I’ve been working on recently.